“Crucible of Zapatismo: Hacienda Hospital in the Seventeenth Century”

Extract

Readers of John Womack's monumental Zapata and the Mexican Revolution are familiar with the names of the great Morelos sugar plantations whose drive for modernization in the late nineteenth century eventually pushed desperate peasants to revolt. Many of these haciendas bore names of Indian villages long since destroyed by indigenous population decline and the hacendados' thirst for land: Cuahuixtla, Chinameca, Zacatepec, Atlacomulco, Cocoyoc; others had religious appellations testifying to the piety or ecclesiastical status of their founders: Santa Inés, Santa Clara, San Vicente; an occasional hacienda, such as Casasano, even carried the name of its founder. Yet one hacienda that figures prominently in Womack's account bore the curious designation Hospital. Though considerably smaller than many of its neighbors, Hospital emerges from Womack's narrative as perhaps the most villainous of all Morelos latifundia. To the land-starved villagers of Anenecuilco, its owner scornfully suggested that they “farm in a flowerpot,” and Hospital became a principal target of zapatista revenge.